ATELIER | Develop Your Craft

A series of workshops for the creative and professional development of theatre artists. For emerging and established artists of all disciplines. Each workshop is only $75 with all proceeds going to ARTISTA, Imago Theatre’s Free Mentorship Program for Youth.

WORKSHOPS

The first part of the workshop will consist of exercises in physical body awareness. This is done to prepare the students to transform themselves physically while working with the full faced archetype masks. The next phase of the workshop will focus on improvisation games that include free word associations. In order to work with the half masks the students must be able to transform themselves physically but also be willing to jump into the unknown, trusting their imagination and saying the first thing that comes to them.

For actors and directors, both established and emerging.In this workshop, we will examine the ‘who, what, why and how’ of the audition process. Who am I meeting? What piece should I choose and why? How should I interpret it? How do I make the most of the audition time? How should I approach each audition? Preparation and presentation are key to a successful first meeting for both the actor and the director. The aim of the workshop is to demystify the audition process and to encourage a more active participation from both sides of the table, as equal partners. In short, how can the audition be more of an allied encounter, a chance to work, test ideas and begin a relationship?

Note: Each actor-participant is required to prepare an audition piece from the contemporary theatre repertoire.

In this day long workshop your creator’s voice will be tapped by way of character work: a physical approach Martha adapted from her training at Ecole Jacques Lecoq and her years of experience of creating original theatre. This class exposes the student to Lecoq’s technique of physically identifying with the rhythms and dynamics of the four elements (fire, water, air and tree) and then transposing them into the dramatic dimension of character and story. But the process has an interesting hitch: The ‘universality of tree’, is an impossible quest. By looking for this “universality”, you fail. It is through this ultimate failure that your personal imagination and voice is revealed. Your characters begin to talk and therefore you begin to talk. What you want to bring to the empty stage or the empty page becomes evident. You find out what you want to talk about. Theatre is born. As Lecoq wrote, ‘When a student has experienced this starting point, his body will be freed, like a blank page in which drama can be inscribed.”

The objective of this workshop is to provide you with the “tools” required for a critical reading of a theatrical text. There are many lenses through which one can read a play. In thinking of a play for performance, a designer, actor or director will focus on different aspects in order to take the play “from the page to stage.” We will examine how to prepare for rehearsals, how to rigourously and creatively mine the text and how to bring, through this process of preparation, an informed interpretation of any given narrative. These ‘techniques’ will give you the necessary tools for interpreting the “world” of a play and to understand how an artist prepares for production.

This course will introduce participants to the Six Viewpoints improvisation technique, addressing essential performance concepts such as being present, active listening, spontaneity, and ensemble playing. Employing the technique as developed by Mary Overlie, separating live performance into six categories; Space, Shape, Time, Emotion, Movement, and Story (SSTEMS), we will focus on the concepts of Space and Time in performance. And delve into our ability to create intuitively, develope performers mental flexibility, emotional articulation, and commitment to physical expression in group work.

Imago Theatre was created in 1987, making it one of Montreal’s longest running independent English-language theatre companies. Founded by Andrés Hausmann, the company started out producing a series of socially relevant and innovative works in both English and French, calling upon the talents of some of Quebec’s leading anglophone and francophone artists. Repertory productions included Milan Kundera’s Jacques and his Master, Beckett’s Shorter Plays, and Quartet by Heiner Muller and new works such as the collective creation, Incandescent, Bivouac by Louise Arsenault and Confidences by Richard Simas.

In 2000, Clare Schapiro was invited to take the reins, bringing to Imago her 20 years of experience in the performing arts, principally as founder and director of Montreal’s Créations Etc. (1978-1990), a unique bilingual theatre company developing and producing original works by young people, and as co-founder of Théâtre 1774 (1988-1993), whose works then addressed Montreal’s linguistic identity and the important role of language in our society. During her years as Artistic Director, Clare revitalized the company by securing stable operating funding and focusing the programming on presenting Canadian writers such as Bryden MacDonald, Elyse Gasco, Michael Mackenzie, Greg MacArthur and Carole Fréchette.

In 2013, Imago welcomed Micheline Chevrier as its new Artistic and Executive Director. Micheline brings with her over 30 years of theatre experience having directed and taught across the country and abroad, as well as worked as Associate Artistic Director at Theatre New Brunswick, Associate Dramaturg at Playwright’s Workshop Montreal and Associate Artist at Canadian Stage in Toronto. She was Artistic Director of Ottawa’s Great Canadian Theatre Company from 1995 to 2000. Under her leadership, the company has refocused its mandate (presenting the feminine perspective), expanded its artistic activities, and forged new relationships with companies, both local and national.

About

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